


Spiders from Mars

by glorious_spoon



Series: Hurt/Comfort Bingo 2018 [1]
Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Fever, Hallucinations, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-02
Updated: 2018-08-02
Packaged: 2019-06-20 17:36:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15539475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glorious_spoon/pseuds/glorious_spoon
Summary: His skin felt hot and tight, like his entire body had been zipped into a too-small spacesuit and then set on fire.





	Spiders from Mars

**Author's Note:**

> For a tumblr prompt by @zivitz, who prompted: How about fever/delirium for Peter and Gamora?
> 
> Fills my fever/delirium square on my H/C Bingo card.

“Hush.” A cool, calloused hand settled onto his forehead, and he arched into the touch. His skin felt hot and tight, like his entire body had been zipped into a too-small spacesuit and then set on fire. “Peter, hush. You’ll be fine. Do you understand?”

He swallowed thickly, and only then realized that the low keening noise that seemed to be drilling into his skull was coming from his own throat. He fumbled, reaching out, and her other hand curled around his wrist gently. “G’m’ra.”

“I’m here,” Gamora said. “Hush. You need to keep still. I don’t want to strap your hands down again, but I will if I have to. Do you understand?”

Peter licked his lips, which felt cracked and dry, his tongue thick, his throat like sandpaper. “Why?”

“You don’t remember?” Her fingers slid back into his hair, pushing the sweat-soaked strands off of his forehead. “You were trying to claw your skin off.”

“Huh.” He finally managed to peel his eyelids open. Gamora’s face swam before his eyes, a smudge of green against the dark bulkhead, her hair loose around her shoulders. She looked exhausted. “I don’ r’member that. Wha’ happened?”

“You were drugged,” she said, and let go of his wrist. Peter raised his hand before his eyes; it seemed strangely unattached to the rest of him, like a doll’s hand, or an automaton. There were bloody scratches scattered across his inner arm, pressure bruises around his wrist. “What do you remember?”

He squeezed his eyes shut. The last clear memory was stepping down onto the familiar, squalid streets of Knowhere, Rocket bitching comfortably about something on his left, watching Gamora walk ahead of him with idle appreciation for the swing of her hips and the curve of her ass in black fighting leathers and then—

Nothing.

Wait. Not _nothing_. There were, there had been— “Spiders,” he mumbles. “Everywhere.”

“You kept saying that,” Gamora said, scratching her fingernails gently against his scalp. “What are spiders?”

“Earth thing,” Peter mumbled. “Eight legs. Freaky-looking little bugs. Used to scare th’ shit out of me when I was a kid.”

“There were no spiders.”

There _were_ , but since he also remembered them glowing electric green and talking to him, they probably didn’t actually exist outside of his fever-damaged brain. _Probably_. “Kay.”

“You don’t remember anything else?”

“No. Drugged?”

“We think so. The vendor was claiming that it was unintentional and he doesn’t usually serve Terrans, but—”

“Yeah, right.” Terran biology was nearly indistinguishable from Xanderian, for all intents and purposes. Even with the Ravagers, he’d rarely wound up accidentally poisoned. Intentionally, on the other hand— 

“Yeah,” Gamora echoed, something hard and angry in her voice. “Right.”

“You kill him?” Talking made his throat hurt; he felt like he’d swallowed a fistful of nettles, a dry itch at the back of his throat that he knew was going to blossom into full-blown agony if he gave into the urge to cough. But this was important. Murdering a contact would get them into all kinds of trouble that they really didn’t need.

“No,” Gamora said reluctantly. “Rocket and Drax wanted to, but I told them you wouldn’t want that. Alright?”

He managed a smile. “Proud of you.”

“Oh, shut up,” Gamora murmured, but her hand was still in his hair, petting gently and grounding him in reality, so she couldn’t really be that mad. “Do you need anything? Are you hungry?”

“Thirsty,” he rasped.

“I’ll get you some water. Stay here.”

“Not goin’ anywhere.” He was pretty sure he couldn’t move in any case. His entire body felt like it had been stretched out and boiled limp.

Gamora hesitated, then leaned down to press her lips to his forehead. “Stay here,” she murmured again, and was gone.


End file.
